Spoon

Dat 15: So I met up with a buddy of mine and we watched Black Panther last night, it was alright. So far today has been a slow day. Slept in late, and haven't really done anything productive, but also haven't been playing games.

Day 14: Did my speech today, but the speakers in the room were broken so my video didn't have the impact I wanted. Other than that I felt it went pretty good. I'm planning on going to see Black Panther tonight if the theaters near me have tickets available. Honestly I can't really think of much else to write since I didn't have stats today and I slept in...

Day 13: So in my stats class, we did the project-exam's data gathering in class, which is normally assigned over the weekend, and I managed to get that done today. My spoken comm speech is tomorrow and I feel pretty confident that I will do well. Unfortunately, last night while I was working on the stats homework that was due today, I ended up not having enough time to do the online workshop (think group discussion and review/revision), so I'm hoping that I can still turn it in tonight partial credit. Even when I did sit down and try to come up with an idea for my paper I just kept drawing blanks. Hopefully things go better tonight.

I will absolutely do that, thanks for the suggestion! Anyways, I haven't relapsed, but these last few days have been quite hectic, so I apologize for not updating the Daily Journal. Day 12: I managed to finish one of my late english papers yesterday and got it turned in, and right now I'm about to go work on this week's assignment (which is due roughly in 5 hours, but has a loose deadline). I've also recently started picking up the guitar and learning how to play, so one of the things I've used to motivate myself to get all the overdue work is whenever I have them all turned it I will reward myself with a better guitar. Anyways I'm going to keep this post short since I need to get back to working on my assignments. I also just set up my reminder so hopefully I won't go AWOL again.

Day 9: Finally back on track with the posting! Today was a productive one. A friend of mine asked me to help him work on a personal project he was making a while ago and I finally found a solution to the problem he had, and even managed to get the whole thing coded! The only concern I have is that this project is a game, but since I'll be coding it, I don't think it will be too much of an issue. Other than that, I did break out my guitar again and started re-learning how to play... not the easiest thing to do since my fingers won't do what my mind wants them to, but I guess that's part of the process. I don't have spoken communication tomorrow, so at least I'll have another day to prepare for my speech. I'm a little bit bummed out right now cause earlier today when I was getting lunch, on the way home I ran over a nail, which is currently embedded in my rear passenger tire... Luckily I don't seem to be losing air pressure, or if I am it's at an insignificant rate since it's been 8 hours and my tire is still pretty much the same. One of the downsides of living in Salt Lake is literally everything is closed on Sundays. So that means even if I was losing air pressure, I'd have to drop my car off at the tire repair place and walk home, just to come back the next day. Thank God that isn't the case though, cause that would really have made me upset.

Day 8: Again, I keep forgetting to post these, but I'm working on getting caught up. Yesterday was a really slow day... not much happened. I started learning guitar again, hopefully that will keep me occupied whenever I'm bored.

Day 7: Forgot to post, but nothing really happened today yesterday. My Stats class meets Mon-Thurs, so I only had my afternoon class.

Day 6: Of course the day I decided to actually get my stats homework done before class is the day my teacher doesn't ask for it. I should explain a bit: He doesn't ever really ask us to turn it in, but instead, he'll have Daily Problems that are usually from the previous night's homework, and usually, I do them in class (much like half the class). But last night I had enough time to get it finished, but today instead of doing the daily problem, he just decided to give everybody a free grade. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining because a) I got a free 100 and b) I should be doing the homework every day regardless, but it does kinda feel like the work I did put in last night was all for naught. ANYWAYS, I've found how I want to start my Spoken Communications speech about Westworld; there's a scene in the first episode where a robot is malfunctioning and starts quoting Shakespeare, and it's the scene that actually got me to start watching the show in the first place, so I'll start with that scene, then lead into my speech. I've also texted my parents to see if they can recommend a good exercise routine since I now have a massive gap in my day and a nice gym in my apartment complex. Hopefully, that will not only give me something to do during the day, but it will also help me lose some weight I've gained over the years. EDIT: I could swear I posted this last night, but apparently I didn't.

Forgot to write up Day 5: Not much happened... I've got a speech coming up in Spoken Comm. that I'm going to shamelessly use the stuff I wrote in my English Paper about Westworld as the content, killing two birds with one show.

Day 4: Grades just came in for the two classes that ended yesterday... I passed one, failed the other. On the positive side, the class I did fail was not a required class for my degree, so at least that's something to be thankful for. Since today was my day off, I did manage to get some assignments in my other classes done early, including a Literary Analysis for English. I decided to write about Westworld since it's currently my favorite TV show, and I know a lot of people didn't rewatch the series a second time, missing the deeper story. I did spend more of the day than I would have liked to watching YouTube videos, but all in all, it's been a productive day... certainly more productive than it would have been if I had just played games.Since the two classes I have left are at 10-11 and 330-420, respectively, I will need to find something to do in the middle of the day that's more productive than coming back to my apartment and watching tv... If I remember, I'll try to go to the gym and start working out. EDIT: I guess I forgot to push submit last night

Day Three: I've been up since about midnight last night, but it's been a surprisingly productive day. Normally after days like these I'd want to sit down and play games, but right now I'm just eating dinner and watching an episode of a show on netflix. Normally just watching the show wouldn't be enough, but I don't know if it's because I'm tired or if stepping away from gaming has helped quiet my mind a bit... I'd like to think it's the latter, but I know it's way too early for that to be the case. Tomorrow I have the day off, so I'll have to find something to fill my day. I'll probably do some catch-up work for the classes I fell behind in due to the gaming. I will have to do that somewhere outside my apartment since A) it's a complete mess and B) I'm afraid I'll slip back into my old habits if I stay. But that's all about tomorrow. Not much else happened today... two of my classes ended, so that will take off a lot of the stress from my somewhat heavy workload, but it also removes half my schedule, so now my classes are from 10-11 then 330-420, so those gaps have me worried the most... I'll need to find something productive to do.

Day Two: Almost caved in today, but I guess that was to be expected. Instead of playing games, I managed to install and setup Arch Linux on my old laptop without using an installer, so I'm really proud of that since it's something I've been wanting to learn and do. One of the perks of using Linux is it has almost zero support for games, and the few options out there are buggy as heck, so that's something beneficial for me. I accidentally let my nap turn into full-blown sleeping, so I just woke up ... I took a sleeping pill so hopefully that will help me get back on a normal circadian rhythm. Edit: I was not able to fall back asleep, but I dragged myself to campus, so I'll be here for the rest of day 3.

Thanks! It's my dream school, but like I said in my introduce me page, because it's a Computer Science focused school gaming is integral to the culture, making quitting that much more difficult.

Alright, this is Day 0 of my Daily Journal because I did log into a game for a few minutes, but I caught myself and managed to stop and log off, so I'm hoping that will be the last time for the next 90 days. As of right now I'm not too sure what I should expect yet, but I am hoping this is going to be what I need to move forward. I met with Morgan Smith this morning as he and I attend the same college, and we had a very good discussion involving what to expect with this program, things I should look into for replacing games in my life, and useful tools for keeping myself away from relapsing. I downloaded and installed ColdTurkey, which will be a good tool for reminding me that I am stopping games, as well as most other forms of social media and virtual distractions. As of the time I'm writing this, I've hit Checkpoint 4 in Respawn. While I still haven't decided what I want to do to fill my time when I would normally be gaming, for now I'm considering making music, but I will need to make sure that doesn't end up causing the same issues gaming does, and I know I'll need to find other activities. As suggested, I signed up for headspace, and have done my first meditation. Here are my 10 things I'm grateful for today: I'm Grateful that I have a mentor I can talk to who has used Game Quitters I'm Grateful that I'm going to the college of my dreams learning what I love to do and I'm also Grateful for my college's administration having the thoughtfulness to step in and see how I'm doing when I was slipping I'm Grateful for my awesome apartment I'm really grateful for ColdTurkey I'm Grateful for the Game Quitters series and community I'm Grateful for my laptop (which also happens to be a result of my gaming addiction) I'm grateful for my car I'm Grateful for sleeping pills I'm Grateful for music Since this is being written in the middle of the day, Here are some Goals I hope to get done before tonight: Start reading a book Go to the Gym and work out Clean my Apartment a bit I will add a reply before I go to bed tonight containing what I managed to accomplish. EDIT: I fell asleep before I could add my reply, and unfortunately I managed to get none of those done.

Ah, no problem. Wasn't aware if it would be an issue (also didn't know about spoilers till now).

Hi, my name is Thomas (everyone: "Hi Thomas") and I'm starting my journey to a gaming free life. I started playing games around the time I was 5 or 6, first on a Gameboy, then a Gamecube, and eventually I found my way to Steam, World of Warcraft, and the wonderful world of computer gaming. At first I was able to balance keeping my real life going and just using gaming as something fun to do with my friends when I had free time, but as the years went on, I found myself playing more and more games, paying less attention to my real life, and ignoring my homework, going to bed later and getting less sleep, falling asleep in class, etc. (I'm sure most of you can sympathize with that). Even though I was able to barely scrape by in high school and managed to graduate, I did it with a below-average GPA and the bare-minimum needed to get my diploma. When I went off to college, at first I had a renewed determination and purpose of life, and things went very well for the first few quarters Side note: my college is computer science based, and uses the Quarter system (1 quarter is 10 weeks, with 2 "sprints" that are 5 weeks each), and because the community was full of computer science and tech-savvy people, gaming was naturally a part of our culture. As time went on, I found myself getting more and more bored, and wanted something to fill my free time, and of course the first thing to pop into my mind was video games. This ultimately led me into a downward spiral where, at first, I was just postponing assignments until the last minute to get them done, then I would keep playing and said "Oh, I'll just turn it in late." which eventually led to "Oh well it's already late, and I don't want to get further behind so I just won't do it and instead I'll focus on the next assignment." But I never did focus on the next assignments. I would always keep playing games. It even got to the point a couple times where I would play games for hours on end without noticing and when I started playing at 6pm and I think I've only been playing for 45 minutes, suddenly it's 1:30am and the night has just disappeared, which led me to going to bed late, waking up late, staying up even more late until soon enough I was waking up at 3pm and going to bed at 7am, all the while getting nothing productive done. (the most recent time was literally last week). This self-destructive pattern got me kicked out of college once, and although I managed to get back in, as I said I'm falling back into the same habits. I want to change, but I can't trust myself alone to push through, so I signed up here so I have a community to back me up. To help keep me accountable, here are my account details so y'all can bother me whenever I'm playing video games: Nobody has to add me on any of these, but by putting them up here for everyone to see I'm making it so I can't lie to y'all, and more importantly to myself.